Glockenspiel notes (Job No: 1220)

Friday 31 October 2014

There are actually two glockenspiels in the workshop requiring new notes, so obviously I make them all at the same time.

The main difficulty I have is finding material of the correct thickness; a lot of old glocks use imperially sized materials, whereas metal now has to be sold in metric sizes to conform to stupid government legislation brought in those self serving idiots in Westminster. Now I can’t buy 1 inch metal stock, but sometimes after searching I can find 25.4mm stock. Anyway, that is a chore, and actually takes time to go through all my stock of metal looking for a suitable piece, because not forgetting it also has to ring.

I was lucky with one of the notes, I found something that matched, but for the main job, I could only match the thickness, not the width. In the photo you can see a wide piece of metal at the back; I have to cut it down it’s length making it 1 inch wide, then dress the edge ensuring that the sides are parallel. After that, it is easy to drill a hole and cut to length!

At this stage I tune the note bars around 10 cents sharp, to allow for finishing and polishing, which detunes the bars. This is part of the job which takes time.